I agree with a couple of previous posts above : if they go ahead and ask the person if they’d like to answer a question, and the person agrees, it is harmless fun.
If they annoy the person who is trying to “run away” from them, it becomes rude.
But reading the original thread, I thought of Jay Leno as well, and didn’t think it was rude. Might not be very funny but not rude!
I am 27.
Let me get this straight. I (a person without children) am at the mall looking for the perfect widget and a bunch of dolled up teens come up and ask me inane questions with a video camera in my face and I am supposed to play along becuse they could be doing something worse?
Is that not a form of indirect blackmail? Teens are pushing the edge further and further along, that is after all their job. It is the job of parents/teachers to let them know when it is too far. They are not adults, they are still in-training. Adults still have responsibility towards them, their adults, not me. I see teens pushing as we all did, what I do not see are authority figures pushing back. The edge moving is supposed to be a challenge, not a given.
Great, they aren’t feral will not cut it with me. Let them play amongst themselves but when they impose on me I will treat them with the same respect I give telemarketers 
Kids always need limits from somewhere, I don’t love your kids or care about their feelings, do you really want it to be my reaction that tells them they have crossed a line? You never know what I have in my backpack or why I may not wish to be filmed. I may need that tape destroyed really badly.
It is not just rude, it could be dangerous.
I’m 37 and don’t expect me to care more about your offspring than you do. I am not going to give a toss about their feelings if they show no respect for mine.
Are you serious?
::lightbulb flickers one::
:smack: Awww,shit…:smack:
As I stated before,To me it would be rude. Thats nice for youif you dont mind a camera shoved in your face and being the butt of a joke by teens,you may be a easier-going than me.
What I consider Rude you are OK with.
Therein lies the problem with this type of behavior.
<curmudgeon mode on>
The kids are not only rude, but clueless as well.
For the parents not to understand why the other adults found the behaviour rude is also clueless.
<curmudgeon mode, ah hell, I’ll leave it on>
and heathen is older than the OP’er (and has disowned a sibling over such a dispute regarding an offspring’s behaviour)
I genuinely enjoy watching kids have even giddy, silly fun. They’re reminders of some of the zest for life that time’s tamped down for me.
But IMO this behavior is rude. From the way I was taught, it’s wrong on two points.
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It amounts to deliberately importuning total strangers for no good reason. Inconveniencing strangers is usually preceded by a token but courteous, “Excuse me, but…” or “I’m sorry to bother you but…” or some such equivalent and then explaining the imposition. Deliberately hassling people at a mall for kicks makes telemarketers look like saints in comparison.
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Their “justification” is mockery, making total strangers the butt of their in-joke ambush tactics. Just because it’s been done on TV doesn’t make it any more acceptable. (gag) The point isn’t really whether people are good sports about it or not. Filming drive-by ambushes isn’t creative, just a mossy cliche. It IS, however, tacky and rude.
If I were so ambushed I’d probably brush past them with a putdown (“Don’t you have a Britney Spears CD to go look for?”) and keep walking. And I’d pity them for having been raised in a barn. Wannabe “shock” tactics have a very short shelf life.
Veb
[sub]In whose experience most teens are pretty delightful, even the giddy ones.[/sub]
My friends and I did prank phone calls, leaving bizarre messages on random people’s answering machines.
We were jerks, serious jerks. I’m glad I grew up.
Another in the “depends on the method” camp.
It could be done in a rude way (e.g., pushing the camera into people’s faces, filming without permission, asking incredibly inappropriate questions.) But I think it could be done in a non-rude manner.
I also don’t agree with the “well, it could be worse” reasoning.
24 here.
If they asked politely before turning on the camera, I have no problem with that. It is then up to the person asked.
If they run up, shoving the camera in your face, trying to ‘surprise’ complete strangers, yes it’s very rude, IMO.
My daughter is five, so I have a few years before I’m probably going to be confronted with a similar situation. However, since I’m only 30 and I still remember my ‘salad days’ I have a recollection that looks like it will be shunned for ‘rudeness’!
A group of friends and I would go to the airport carrying bunches of daisies/carnations/whatever was cheapest and hand them out (remember the hari krishnas (sp?)). We didn’t drink or do drugs, we just had a great time ‘people watching’ and no, we didn’t pass ourselves off as anyone other than ‘flower friends’ or some such other corny name. It was FUN. We’d get a kick out of the husband who turned around and gave the flower to his wife with a smile, and the people who went out of their way to avoid getting a flower (go figure!) It wasn’t done with the intent to make fun of anyone or harass anyone or otherwise be mean or rude. It was just fun.
My daughter and I (on road trips) wave to other kids in cars to see how many will wave back, and we keep a count. Extra points for the whole car waving back. A successful road trip was the one with the most ‘wave’ ratio.
Lest I start to sound like Pollyanna, I definitely have my moments to prove otherwise!
But I wonder why so many automatically passed it off as rude behavior on the kids’ part to do ‘thoughtless questions’ of passerby?
To specifically answer the OP, I would first have a lot of questions about how she approached a video candidate and have a talk about the ethics of videotaping others without their consent, and what would constitute an ‘appropriate’ meaningless question. But then I’d tell her to have fun and probably sit down to watch the tapes with the friends!
Okay, everyone, I missed something somewhere… where did it say they were mocking people? If it did say that somewhere and I missed it, then I would DEFINITELY have something to say to my daughter about that behavior…
The “It-could-be-worse-philosophy-doesn’t-hold-water-with-me” philosophy doesn’t hold water with me.
Obviously I must have been raised wrong, because to me this kind of behaviour ranks right up there with those people who ask for signatures in front of grocery stores in terms of personal space invasion, and if I can politely say no thank you to those people, I guess I can muster up the maturity to say it to a bunch of younger kids.
If a gaggle of teenagers approaching to ask you questions about your french fries or what kind of jeans you wear or whatever the hell they’re asking (which, like I said before, I’m presuming is not something outright offensive like “When was the last time you took a shit?” or something) makes you think you’re being mocked…well then, I would say the problem lies with you and how you interpret others’ actions toward you.
I mean, I find the at least ten people a day who ask me whether or not it hurt to get my lip pierced and why I would want to do that because everyone knows it gives you AIDS, MUCH MORE OFFENSIVE than any group of kids. And those questions are always posed to me by “adults”, who don’t have the excuse of being young and insane to fall back on.